Mar 2008 - Jul 2008

Exchange Program

Summary

high school into college. This time game development is also a primarily

interest of mine. I believe I am easy to work with person, outgoing and

friendly. I consider myself determined, fast-learner and hardworking. I

also have shown leadership abilities where required.

Qualities

Fast Learner

I participated in an annual Telerik competition in my university (http://competition.telerik.com/). It was required from us to write “Jacks or Better” slot machine poker implementation. I had only C# knowledge. I had to learn to write asp.net pages and use AJAX technology for only 1 month and half. I managed to successfully write a solution that was awarded with a first place. (and won a laptop that I traded later for PS3 :) ) On this link you can find VS2008 Professional solution:(http://home.aubg.bg/students/EIP060/JackOrBetter/Jack.rar)

In my Erasmus exchange in Otto-Von-Guericke university in Magdeburg,Germany. I took a course in Visual User Interfaces. For final assessment wewere required to do a group project of four people. We decided to do an item browser implementation for n95 Nokia phone. The challenge was that we needed to do it in 2-3 weeks time and prototype it fast. We were suggested to use Python. I learned basics in Python and for 2 weeks of prototyping managed to create a decent demo application. I did 80% of the code for the demo. We were voted best project out of 9. Here is a link to a video we used to present the project: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWGQv7ANQ2o).

Enthusiastic about Game Programming

I have been always very enthusiastic about game development. I have read 3 books about XNA. I am also taking an independent study in Direct X 9.0 API and I have been regular in gamedev-bg.net forum.

I have organized a Pacman programming workshop in XNA that unfortunately was not very successful but I learned a lot when tutoring to freshman students. C# is an easy to start language but not piece of cake that needs some build up. Also to make someone do solution on their own without much experience is very difficult. I will definitely try another iteration of this workshop in my last semester of studies. You can find some materials on my website at http://home.aubg.bg/students/EIP060/.

I have organized a Crytek Black Sea presentation in my university that turnedout to be very successful. I intended to arrange another presentation from Game Dev company in Bulgaria this semester. http://www.cssubg.org/blog/2008/10/01/follow-up-xna-introduction-to-game-programming/

I gave XNA programming presentation including live demo in which I animateda sprite in 10 minutes. Small article can be read on CSSU blog

Leadership and initiative

Currently I am involved in a project for Imagine Cup 2010.www.imaginecup.com. As of the moment I have nothing to show but I hope b ythe end of the year to have a working prototype.

I have been part of CSSU (Computer Science Student Union)(http://www.cssu-bg.org/) from its start and I am currently integral part of it.CSSU is involved in weekly presentation on computer science and IT topics inAmerican University in Bulgaria. I consider the experience that I have gotten from organizing presentations and fighting with the administration as invaluable.

Interest

Gaming of course

Role-playing games

Skateboarding and snowboarding

Quality novels

Music

Playing drums (practising very rarely nowadays)

Skills

Skills

Java

I use Java in my studies in Germany for doing homeworks. Being very close to C# I had no problems to use it.

Python

I have used Python for UserInterface project on a n95 Nokia phone.

C# Programming with XNA

I have been using C# extensively with XNA for prototyping small stuff in the last 1-2 years.

Lua gameplay and UI programming

Haemimont games is using extensively Lua scripting language for building its gameplay and UI logic. I did not know Lua before starting the job. One book about Lua and 3 months in beta has hooned my Lua skills to a very high level.